Famous Givers and Their GiftsBolton, Sarah Knowles
History
Famous Givers and Their Gifts
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
Philanthropists
In the science museum three large, well-lighted rooms on the second
floor will be used for collections in zoölogy, botany, and mineralogy.
"The closely allied branches of geology, the study of the earth's crust;
paleontology, the study of life in former ages; anthropology, the
natural history of the human species; archæology, the science of
antiquity; and ethnology and ethnography, treating of the origin,
relation, characteristic costumes and habits of the human races, will,
no doubt, receive as much attention as space and funds will permit."
It is also expected that works of skill and invention will be gathered
into an industrial museum for the benefit especially of the many
artisans of Pittsburg. Courses of free lectures will be given to
teachers, to pupils, and to the public, as in the American Museum of
Natural History of New York. Below the three rooms in the museum are
three lecture-rooms, which can be used separately or as one room.
In one end of the large library building, and separated from it by a
thick wall so as to deaden sound, is the music-hall, semi-circular in
plan, with seats for two thousand one hundred persons, and a stage for
sixty musicians and a chorus of two hundred. Much Sienna marble is used,
the floor is mosaic, the walls are painted a deep rose-color, and the
architecture proper in a soft ivory tone, with gilded ornamentation. Two
free concerts, or organ recitals, are given each week through the year,
on the large modern concert organ, built expressly for this hall.
Musical lectures are also given, free from technicalities, illustrated
by choir, organ, and piano. This is certainly taking music, art, and
science to the people as a free gift. To this noble work Mr. Carnegie
has given $2,100,000. Of this amount, $800,000 was for the main
building, $300,000 for the seven branch libraries or distributing
stations, and $1,000,000 as an endowment fund for the art-gallery. From
the annual income of this art-fund, which will be about $50,000, at
least three of the pictures purchased are to be the work of American
artists exhibited that year, preferably in the Pittsburg gallery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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